The National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) has threatened to withdraw the licence of any of its Front End Partners caught charging Nigerians for the National Identification Number (NIN) enrolment.
This is contained in a statement issued by the Commission’s Head of Corporate Communications, Kayode Adegoke, on Saturday.
This followed a series of complaints from Nigerians over how they are being charged for the enrolment which is supposed to be free. To address this, NIMC said it has directed security agencies to track any staff or FEPs caught extorting applicants for NIN enrollment.
“Anyone caught will be sanctioned appropriately in line with the provisions of the law, and the license of such FEP will be withdrawn,” the NIMC warned.
NIN is free
The Commission insisted that enrolment for the NIN is free, adding that it did not authorize its staff or its FEPs to charge applicants.
NIMC urged Nigerians to report any staff or FEP that demands money for enrolment through its various channels including email- customercare@nimc.gov.ng or call 07002255646.
“The Commission assures of its utmost commitment to ensuring seamless enrollment services and pledges to stem the tide of extortion,” it stated.
Backstory
A recent Nairametrics report detailed how the illegal charges by the FEPs are slowing the country’s efforts to identify all its citizens through the NIN enrolment.
Although some of the FEPs justified the charges, blaming it on the delay in getting payments from NIMC and the need to sustain the business, NIMC recently announced that it had cleared all outstanding payments to the licensed partners.
NIMC noted that the engagement of FEPs was a stop-gap measure approved by the erstwhile Minister of Communications and Digital Economy to scale up NIN enrolment pending the commencement of the World Bank/ID4D project.
What you should know
Last month, the Director-General of the NIMC, Engr. Abisoye Coker-Odusote disclosed that the Commission had issued 115 million to Nigerians and legal residents in the country as of October 2024.
- As of December 2023, the NIMC database showed that issued NINs stood at 104.16 million.
- This indicates that despite the policies of the government mandating the use of the NIN for several services including international passports, driver’s license, bank accounts, JAMB and WAEC examinations, and mobile SIM registration, among others, only about 10 million NINs were issued in the first 10 months of the year.
- For a country whose population is estimated at over 220 million, the NIMC data infers that over 100 million Nigerians are still out of the identity system.
Under the World Bank-supervised National Identification for Development (ID4D) project, NIMC was expected to have issued NIN to 148 million Nigerians by the end of June 2024.
However, the country’s failure to meet this target has seen the World Bank restructure and extend the project to June 2026.